And so, dear readers, we come to the end of the illustrious story of Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay.   Kavalier comes back! He and Rosa rekindle their romance; older, wiser, and calmer! Tommy confirms the truth about his real father! Joe buys Empire Comics and comes to terms with his family’s death! Sammy goes out to Los Angeles and signs the name “Kavalier and Clay”, thus cementing the powerful dream he and Joe set out to pursue so many years ago!

The hearings of the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1954 would put a damper on the comic book world for several years, thanks in large part, to the book Chabon mentioned, The Seduction of the Innocent by Frederic Werthem, which I highly suggest you look at in the Mill Vallley Public Library for a truly fascinating throwback to some of the concerns that arose surrounding this art form.  (The Mill Valley Library will feature a display on many of the books discussed in Werthem’s book,  so keep your eyes peeled!) Sammy’s take on the matter, after being ousted on national television as a “subersive” homosexual whose story lines always involved a sidekick who must surely have been proof of the author’s gay tendencies with the horrific side-affect of turning all the  American, comic-book-reading youth gay is, “Dr. Frederic Werthem was an idiot; it was obvious that Batman was not intended consciously or unconsciously to play Robin’s corrupter: he was meant to stand in for his father, and by extension for the absent, indifferent, vanishing fathers of the comic-book-reading boys of America” (631). Which may make one wonder if, in large part, besides the theme of escapism and imagination, besides the story of the dawning of Comic Books against the backdrop of a horrific war, this story is ultimately about family and hope.

Final thoughts? Reactions?

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